PUSHBACK Talks
Landlords without faces, apartments without tenants. In 2019, filmmaker Fredrik Gertten released Push, an award-winning documentary that explores the unaffordable, unlivable city, and the growing global housing crisis. Following the Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Leilani Farha, the film sought to understand why cities around the world are becoming increasingly expensive.
In June of 2020, Fredrik and Leilani teamed up again to continue the conversation they began with the film, and PUSHBACK Talks was born. Since then, PUSHBACK Talks has grown into an exploration of the social, political, and economic forces that shape our world, and of the actions people are taking to push back against inequality, corruption, authoritarian systems, poverty, war, and the shift towards far-right conservatism.
Join the Filmmaker (Gertten) and the Advocate (Farha) as they dissect these topics, uncover the connections between them, and search for solutions. How can we, as individuals, movements, and communities, fight back – push back – to build societies where every human being has the right to live equally, freely, and with dignity?
Listen to PUSHBACK Talks and join the conversation for a better, fairer world.
For more about PUSH and to view it: www.pushthefilm.com
For more about Leilani Farha and her organization, The Shift: www.make-the-shift.org
For more about Fredrik Gertten and his other films: www.wgfilm.com
If you are interested in watching his newest documentary: www.breakingsocialfilm.com
PUSHBACK Talks
Summer Word Food: Remake & Sleep
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The Pushback Talks Summer Series is back!
This summer, Fredrik & Leilani are serving up what we call Word Food – bite-sized conversations that pack a punch. Here's how it works: each week, we randomly select two words and dive into a 10-15 minute exploration of how these seemingly simple words intersect with our complex socio-political moment.
Think of it as intellectual snacking with substance – light enough for your summer playlist, deep enough to make you think twice about the world around us.
New episodes out every Wednesday, so make this your midweek ritual for curious minds.
This week: Remake & Sleep
I'm Fredrik Gertten and I'm the filmmaker.
Leilani FarhaAnd I'm Leilani Farha, and I'm the advocate.
Fredrik GerttenAnd this is Pushback Talks Summer Special, where we play with words, me and Leilani, and we call it Word Food. Leilani, are you ready? I feel like I'm on a game show. You are. I'm ready. Let's go. Are you ready to I'm ready? Another word. Oh my gosh. Remake. Or even everything would re but remake. Remake.
Leilani FarhaRemake. Yeah. Is that a word? Okay. Um, no words. Uh really, that doesn't, that's not a word that really drums up a lot for me. I think when I like to be honest, when I hear the word remake, it's like I think of television shows or movies.
Fredrik GerttenIt's a remake of you see, there is there is a word. Yeah.
Leilani FarhaThere is a word. And normally it's pretty depressing because normally it's Americans remaking some really good, what they call foreign film or you know, show from another place. I suppose um that then suggests a kind of negative aspect to remaking, which is what was wrong with the original. Um do things really need to be remade? Questionable.
Fredrik GerttenUh what would you like to remake, Leilani?
Leilani FarhaOh, I'd like to remake my career. How about that?
Fredrik GerttenYou see? A remake.
Leilani FarhaStart there.
Fredrik GerttenYeah, you will become a remakeup artist.
Leilani FarhaThat's right. I do need a remakeup artist, actually. Now that I'm well into my 50s. Uh but you know what else remake makes me think of? It kind of dovetails with the situation we're in with this very precarious planet. You know, the fact that we are killing the planet, the planet is in its most fragile state ever, um, and the need to remake out of old things rather than building new things. Um, and I guess that's like reuse, recycle, but it's also in the housing world where we're really having a lot of conversations about um not building, building, building as the only solution to the housing crisis, but also taking what we have and redoing it and remaking it and and and refashioning it into affordable housing for those who need it. Uh so that's that's about as far as I can take remake, Frederick.
Fredrik GerttenBut you can take the make out of re and you can make a revolution or a revelation or uh oh, you want all the re's.
Leilani FarhaNo, I don't know.
Fredrik GerttenYou if you want, you can go re-crazy. Re-creative.
Leilani FarhaRecreate, recreate is nice. Yeah, recreate, yeah. So you see.
Fredrik GerttenRejuvenate, rejuvenate, yes.
Leilani FarhaThat's nice too.
Fredrik GerttenUh refurbish. Uh restart.
Leilani FarhaRestart.
Fredrik GerttenOh.
Leilani FarhaYeah. Retrofit, except it's retrofit. It's big in Europe. Retrofitting all the buildings to make them more efficient.
Fredrik GerttenBut the good thing with this remake word is that you now can pull a restart on me.
Leilani FarhaOkay, we're gonna restart the word. Yes. The word salad. I think that's what we should call it. Instead of word food, word salad. Well, okay.
Fredrik GerttenWe can always remake the titles, no worries.
Leilani FarhaOkay. Are you ready? How about the word sleep?
Fredrik GerttenOh, sleep, schlafen, dormir, dormire. Ah, yeah. It's nice. I I mean uh I might be slightly better than you in sleeping because you're a lousy one, I know. But whenever I get a good night's sleep, I really appreciate it. It's it's a good thing. I'm a little bit too restless to sleep on daytime or sleep on on trains or cars or whatever. I'm always looking around and my brain is going, and I I don't sleep during films. No, no, I can put on a little podcast to fall asleep sometimes. But not ours. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Leilani FarhaPushback talks is far too lively.
Fredrik GerttenBut then sleep is, of course. We have a train here to Copenhagen, which I take mostly when I go to the airport in Copenhagen. And you when you travel at early hours, you can see working people going to very early jobs or coming back from night shifts. And you can see you know the privilege we have who can sleep. And a lot of people don't have the privilege to sleep, and you can see it on their in their faces and on their bodies. It's like in the end, it just becomes a part of their appearance that here are a group of people who are deprived of their right to sleep. You know, so I think we should maybe talk about the right to sleep.
Leilani FarhaWell, it that is very interesting, Frederick, because people in the United States, in particular my colleagues, do talk about the right to sleep because there are all these very horrible laws in the US that cities uh are really enforcing, but even the Supreme Court has kind of endorsed through a case called Grants Pass. And those laws say that it is illegal to sleep. Well, they say it's illegal to sleep on the streets, but homeless people don't have anywhere else to sleep. So, in turn, they make it illegal to sleep, basically. And so this idea of the right to sleep is super important, and of course, sleep is absolutely necessary to staying alive. It's it's part of our functioning as human beings. And so the idea that you would deprive people of the right to sleep is to deprive them, of course, of a life-saving thing.
Fredrik GerttenI also heard and I learned from our podcast that in the US you you can park your car overnight, but you are not allowed to sleep in your car. So the car is okay, but not a person sleeping inside a car. And there was universities banning students from sleeping in their cars, students who had no student homes.
Leilani FarhaYep, absolutely right. And there are now churches, for example, I went to one in San Diego where they offer their parking lot overnight for homeless people to park their cars and sleep in their cars without being ticketed or towed or fined or whatever. Yeah. It's a cruel, cruel world. But I think too, of course, I've I think about the luxury of sleep. And if you're living in a war-torn place, of course, I think about Gaza, but also look at Sudan and all the displacement and people living in these horrible conditions, and how difficult it must be to sleep. And I mean, I do think of Gaza because I'm seeing on Instagram it's overnight often. There's all this bombing and they have the drones constantly. Drones, how do you sleep?
Fredrik GerttenYeah, how do you sleep when you have a drone hovering? And you don't know if that drone will also carry a weapon. Exactly. Scary, very scary.
Leilani FarhaYeah.
Fredrik GerttenSo let's fight for the right to sleep. I'm with you for everyone.
Leilani FarhaYeah. Okay.
Fredrik GerttenGood night. Thanks. See you, Leila.
Leilani FarhaThat was perfect. So if you like our podcast, you have to let us know. Please send us comments, rate us. I think that helps. Promote the podcast. Tell your friends about us. We need more listeners, and we need a little bit of love too. Love can come in the form of money. If you want to give us a little money every month, you can go to patreon.com, look for pushback talks. Every euro, every pound, every dollar buys Frederick a cortato. No, it helps us produce the podcast. Otherwise, we do it for free.
Fredrik GerttenGood. See you soon.
Leilani FarhaBye, Frederick.
Fredrik GerttenBye.
Kirsten McRaePushback Talks is produced by WG Film. To support the podcast, become a patron by going to patreon.com slash pushback talks. Follow us on social media at make underscore the shift and push underscore the film. Or check out our websites makeshift.org, pushthefilm.com, or breaking socialfilm.com.